gfiles magazine

September 27, 2015

Bicameral incongruities

Parliament is in a crisis which is not likely to blow over
soon. The crisis is formed of several intertwined strands—ideological, personal
and institutional. The ideological divide between the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) and the rest of the political parties, particularly the Congress, has
been there since the very inception of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in
1925 and that of the Jan Sangh in 1951. There is little chance that it will
ever be bridged. Personal hatred between the leaders of the two sides has also
been mutual from the very beginning but it seems a lot more visceral today than
it ever did in the past. The institutional strand is the one that is going to
be the most difficult to straighten out, for it is embedded in the very making
of our Westminster-derived bicameral Parliament.

About us

gfiles is the country's first independent magazine written, designed and produced for India's civil services—the vast and formidable
network of bureaucracies and public sector organisations that
provides continuity and stability to this nation's
governance.